The Gotland Deception

Chapter Four: Task Force Nightfury

The C4ISR suite hummed with electronic life. Wall-mounted displays cycled through threat matrices, satellite feeds, and network traffic patterns. Coffee steam rose from a dozen cups scattered across the mahogany conference table. Outside, big fluffy cotton balls of January love continued to fall around the Arlington glass towers of Rosslyn City, but down here in the digital cocoon, the weather might as well not exist.

Jim Batista stood at the head of the table, studying faces. His team looked rested, a minor miracle after the holidays given how crazy the lead-up to them had been. It had been a rough year, and he knew this year wasn’t going to be any better. He needed them rested — he needed them focused. He just hoped the ten days of rest he’d given them hadn’t dulled them.

“Morning, people. And happy New Year!” Batista’s Utah drawl cut through the ambient hum. “I hope everyone enjoyed their break, ’cause the enemy didn’t take one and it’s time we get back to earning our keep.” He turned to his FBI liaison seated to his right. “Darnell, you’re up. What’s our domestic picture looking like?”

Special Agent Darnell Cross straightened in his chair. The former Philly beat cop turned cyber specialist was a technical wizard when it came to hunting digital adversaries. He tapped his tablet, sending his screen to the main display.

“Happy New Year to you too, boss. I wish I had better news to start the year, sir.” Cross’s Philadelphia accent thickened under stress. “We’ve been tracking increased PLA cyber activity against critical infrastructure since Boxing Day, December twenty-sixth.”

The screen filled with network diagrams. Red intrusion attempts spider-webbed across port facility schematics.

“Primary targets are industrial control systems at our major automated ports.” Cross highlighted nodes. “LA, Newark, Miami, Houston. They’re probing the AI management systems that run container operations.”

Batista leaned forward. “Probing or penetrating?”

“So far… just probing. But it’s sophisticated stuff.” Cross pulled up attack vectors. “They’re targeting the junction points where human operators interface with autonomous systems. The handoff protocols.”

“Smart,” muttered Colonel Rooke from across the table. The CYBERCOM liaison studied the patterns with professional interest. “Hit the seams, not the armor.”

Cross nodded. “Exactly. They know our port automation runs on predictive algorithms. Crane movements, truck routing, container stacking, it’s all AI-optimized. Corrupt those decision trees…”

“And you turn efficiency into chaos,” Batista finished. “Got it. Casualties? Any companies fall victim?”

“None yet. Our defensive measures held.” Cross’s jaw tightened. “But here’s what keeps me up at night.”

New graphics cascaded across the displays. Port throughput statistics. Dependency charts. Supply chain vulnerabilities mapped in painful detail.

“Houston handles forty percent of our military petroleum imports. LA processes sixty percent of transpacific container traffic. Miami’s our primary pharmaceutical gateway.” Cross let the numbers sink in. “We’re talking strategic choke points. And the PLA knows it. That’s why these ports were targeted and not others.”

“Huh, that’s interesting. How close did they get?” This from Alicia Morane, the CIA’s Deputy Director for Foreign Operations. Her voice carried the weight of someone who’d seen networks burned, and burned a few herself.

“Too close, if you ask me.” Cross pulled up forensic data. “They penetrated the demilitarized zones at three facilities. Got within two network hops of the operational technology layer before our AI-enabled intrusion detection caught them.”

“Attribution confidence?” Batista asked, curious if it was the same known actors or someone new.

“We’re high confidence on this one. The digital fingerprints are pretty well known by the NSA at this point. We traced the attacks back to PLA Unit 61456, their critical infrastructure warfare group. It stumped us at first, but looking back on similar attacks, we found the codes matched against what we saw in the Colonial Pipeline sequel from last year and the year before. Sloppy if you ask me, but we’ll take it.”

Mara Whitford, the State Department liaison, removed her reading glasses. “That’s good work, Darnell. It sucks that Beijing will deny involvement. They always do.”

Cross shrugged. “Eh, so what? Let ’em deny it. We know it was them and we stopped them.” Cross’s street edge began to show in his tone. “So, if you can believe this, we actually got lucky on this one. We’ve got packet captures, malware signatures, even sloppy OPSEC on their command infrastructure. It would appear one of their operators forgot to sanitize his time zone data. Using that and some other tools, we back-traced the attack to, I kid you not, the Shangri-La Hotel.”

Batista nearly spat his coffee out. “Whoa, wait a second. You guys managed to trace this hacker back to a hotel in Guangzhou?”

Cross nodded. “We did. But without a visual verification to know if it’s legit, we can’t say for certain that it truly originated there and wasn’t a proxy.”

Batista sat back in his chair, absorbing the information. Around the table, his team processed the implications. The PLA hackers had been targeting American port automation processes for years. The automation of America’s transportation and logistics networks had been a game-changing revolution in productivity. Fewer workers, faster throughput, predictive maintenance. Unfortunately, that efficiency now looked like a new vulnerability.

“OK, recommendations. I mean, is it possible we could get eyes on that hotel, maybe see if there’s something to it?” Batista asked, keeping his tone neutral.

Cross straightened as he answered. “We’re coordinating with DHS and with port authorities on immediate patches that should take care of the issue. But, sir, we need a more thorough security review of our automation architecture.”

“OK, meaning?”

“Meaning we built these systems for efficiency, not necessarily resilience.” Cross pulled up architectural diagrams. “Every automated crane, every autonomous truck, every AI scheduler, they’re all potential attack vectors. We need air gaps, manual overrides, offline contingencies in case next time we don’t get so lucky and prevent them from having some fun inside our systems.”

“Huh, yeah, fat chance of that. That’ll cost billions,” Rooke observed.

“I don’t know about that, but it’s cheaper than losing a port for six months,” countered Cross, meeting his gaze. “I mean, ask Baltimore what happened when their terminals went down in twenty-eight. That resulted in seven billion in economic losses.”

Batista turned to Dr. Helena Yuryevna, their disinformation specialist. The former Russian academic studied the attack patterns with unsettling intensity. “Helena? You look like you’ve got something.”

“Da, I am thinking…” Her accent thickened when she concentrated. “These probes, they are not random. Look at the timing.”

She commandeered the display, overlaying attack time stamps with other data streams.

“December twenty-sixth, they probe LA. December twenty-eighth, Houston. January second, Newark. January fourth, Miami.” She paused. “Now look at ship arrivals.”

New data flowed across the screen. Container vessel schedules. Chinese-flagged ships highlighted in amber.

“Every attack coincides with COSCO vessel arrivals. The hackers are using their own ships as collection platforms.” Yuryevna smiled coldly. “Very clever. Park a signals intelligence suite in a container, intercept local wireless traffic during port operations.”

“Good Lord, really?” Cross began scribbling out a message to send after he returned to his computer. “Damn, I need to alert the field offices about this once our meeting’s over.”

“No worries, but do it quiet,” Batista cautioned. “No need to tip our hand yet. Let’s see if maybe we can try and catch ’em in the act.”

As Cross wrote urgently in his notepad, Batista studied the broader picture. The PLA wasn’t just probing defenses, they were mapping vulnerabilities. Building target packages. Preparing.

“All right, people. Good catch on this.” Batista’s tone sharpened. “Darnell, I want you coordinating with Evan at NSC. We need a classified annex on port vulnerabilities added to the next Presidential Daily Brief.”

“Copy that.”

“Rooke, work with CYBERCOM on active defense measures. If the PLA wants to play in our networks, let’s make sure they find some surprises.”

The cyber commander grinned. “I’ve got some ideas. Honeypots that look like ICS vulnerabilities but actually map their attack infrastructure.”

“Do it. Helena, work up some counternarratives. When Beijing denies involvement, I want us ready to expose their operations.”

“With pleasure.” The Russian’s smile could have frozen vodka.

Batista checked his watch. Twenty minutes into the meeting, and already his year looked complicated. “Mara, State’s going to need talking points for our allies. Especially Singapore and Rotterdam. If the PLA’s hitting our ports, theirs are probably next. Oh, and see if we have anyone in Guangzhou who might be able to pay a visit to this hotel to do some recon work for us.”

“Sure, I can look into that for us. I’ll draft something today,” Mara confirmed.

“Good.” Batista surveyed his team once more. “Questions on the port situation?”

Silence. They were professionals. They knew the stakes.

“All right, then.” Batista pulled up the next agenda item.

The displays shifted to some recent high-resolution satellite imagery. The first image it showed was the Trans-Siberian Railway’s main hub located at the Russian-Chinese cities of Zabaikalsk — Manzhouli. This was the predominant route for both passenger and rail freight moving between the two countries. The caption next to the image indicated that sixty percent of all freight moving into Russia from China traversed this line.

The second and third images showed two air bases in Belarus, Balbasava and Baranovichi. Both had undergone extensive modernization and expansion over the past five years. They now had additional parking aprons flanked on either side with overhead protection and drone nets to help protect the autonomous one-way attack drones and loitering munitions. The high-resolution images showed increased air cargo activity, and neatly parked rows of wheeled military vehicles ranging from four- and six-passenger vehicles to larger five-ton transports and fuel trucks.

“OK, people. Let’s talk about the elephants in the room.” Batista’s voice cut through the tension as he began. “First, let’s start with this announcement from Foreign Minister Qiao. Apparently, the PRC plans to refer to President Ching-te as Governor of Taiwan Province.” He paused, letting that sink in. “I’ve directed the Taiwan Study Group to accelerate the timeline for the delivery and operational status of their mission to be ready by the first of April. What I need to know from the rest of you is this: Does the PRC plan to enforce these customs inspections with military force via a civil police action? A Hong Kong 2.0. Is this more saber-rattling, or the start of the next round of trade talks with the Grain Consortium?”

Mara Whitford leaned forward. “Jim, I need to share something first.”

Evan Rallus raised a hand as Alicia started to speak. “Hold up, Alicia. We’ll circle back to you. Go ahead, Mara.”

“Thanks.” Mara’s fingers drummed once on the table. “I reached out to a friend, Alex Donnelly, at our Beijing embassy. We’ve worked on different projects together for going on fifteen years, so I know him pretty well. He’s now the Economic Unit Chief, Political Section.”

She glanced briefly at her notes. “For a little more than three years, Alex has regularly met with Zhao Lifen — he’s the Deputy Director, Trade Policy Coordination Office. They meet weekly for breakfast and lunch, sometimes both if it’s important. Alex said Zhao’s a pragmatist, walks the line at Commerce. Officially handles trade messaging before his office and our embassy. Unofficially, however” — her eyes swept the room — “he’s become State’s back channel for de-escalation.”

“So I asked Alex, is this more chest-thumping from Ouyang? Same rhetoric we’ve seen since twenty-eight?” Mara’s expression tightened. “Yesterday, Alex left me a voicemail. His voice was… off. Spooked, even—”

“Really? What did he say?” Alicia couldn’t wait this time, concern etching her features.

Mara nodded slowly. “Zhao told Alex to ensure President Ashford understood something: Ouyang was going to be firm on Taiwan.” She let the words hang. “Does that mean he’ll escalate to a direct conflict? Alex wasn’t certain. But in the three years he and Zhao have been meeting, he’s never been this blunt.”

The room was absorbed by quiet, with no one speaking for a moment.

Batista finally broke the silence. “OK, then, I think we have our answer. We’ll circle back in a few days and discuss how we should respond to this once we’ve had some time to think on it. Now that we’ve solved world peace and ended homelessness,” Batista joked, trying to break the tension of the moment before shifting to the next meeting update, “Rooke, you mentioned your people at CYBERCOM had an update on some unique offensive capabilities. Floor’s yours.”

Colonel Everett Rooke sat a little straighter in his chair, the former NSA operative’s fingers unconsciously tapping binary patterns on the table. His North Carolinian drawl emerged, clipped and precise.

“Yes, sir. My team’s been developing a new tool kit targeting Russian rail infrastructure.” He pushed his brief to the main display for everyone to follow along. “Specifically, we’ve gained persistent access to their automated rail-line-switching systems.”

The screen filled with some technical schematics. Rail networks spider-webbed across Russia, Belarus, Iran, China, and the Stan countries, pulsing in an amber color.

Batista smiled as he leaned back in his chair. “Very nice. Walk me through it. How’d you get in and what are you able to do with it?”

“Patience and luck.” Rooke allowed himself a thin smile. “Thankfully, the Russian rail network management system uses a version of Huawei routers that we’re familiar with and have exploited in the past. Chinese hardware, Russian implementation. Neither side fully trusts the other, so it’s created some vulnerabilities that we’ve been quick to identify, and that’s allowed us to create a series of back doors we can access later on at a time of our choosing.”

“Ha-ha, good one, Rooke. The seams once again for the win,” Morane laughed.

“Exactly. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Rooke said, sharing a humorous moment with Morane before turning serious again. “As we moved through their system, we identified the weak link we could exploit to sow some chaos and cause serious damage when the time comes. What we found was a component part, a timing controller chip that still accepts firmware updates.” Rooke smirked as he highlighted code snippets. “Huawei pushes out a series of patches quarterly. We’ve been injecting our own code into those patches for going on eighteen months now.”

“Christ almighty!” Cross’s hand tightened on his coffee cup. “You’ve been inside their rail network for a year and a half?”

“Yes, observing only. At least until now.” Rooke’s expression hardened. “Given current tensions, we’ve gone ahead and developed some active measures.”

New graphics flowed across the displays. The Trans-Siberian Railway stretched across eight time zones. A handful of choke points glowed red.

“The Russians have eight rail lines connecting their Far East oblast to European Russia. But geography’s a beast.” Rooke zoomed in. “They’re funneled through six major tunnels and eight critical bridges. Right now, Chinese engineering teams working with a few thousand of those GR-3R ‘Drevnik’ humanoid robotic workers are helping expand the rail bridge and tunnel capacity. But until those projects are finished, they’re limited to using just three operational tunnels.”

“Ah, those make for some nice bottlenecks,” Batista observed.

“Yeah, massive ones. Seventy percent of their military logistics flow through these choke points.” Rooke pulled up a traffic analysis report. “In peacetime, this is manageable. In a war…”

He let them fill in the blank.

“Yeah, I get it. So what’s the play?” Batista’s tone stayed neutral.

Rooke’s fingers resumed their binary drumming. “Simple physics. Their automated switching system prevents collisions by routing opposing traffic to holding tracks when necessary. As we continue to observe their rail schedules, we’ve mapped when the gates get turned on to divert the trains to the holding tracks.”

The display showed train movements in real-time simulation. Green arrows flowing east and west, diverted smoothly at junction points.

“When authorized, and only when authorized, we flip those gates.” His voice dropped. “An eastbound military transport carrying tanks. A westbound fuel train. Both doing eighty kilometers per hour and neither is diverted.”

The simulation continued to play out, the two arrows converging on each other until they merged into one — impact.

“On one track, we engineer a head-on collision inside a tunnel.” Rooke’s drawl vanished, his tone sharp. “On another track, we time a collision to occur on a bridge span. Either way, you’re looking at weeks of cleanup, and a hell of a mess. If we’re lucky, it could take months to repair and restore traffic. Our bottlenecks become corks.”

Silence fell. Around the table, operators who’d seen death up close processed the implications. Hundreds dead, maybe even thousands. Infrastructure crippled. Supply lines severed.

Cross’s Philly accent cut through. “That’s… Jesus. The crews…”

“Not crews. Military logistics personnel.” Rooke met his gaze. “They’re valid targets under the laws of armed conflict.”

“Still.” The FBI agent’s jaw worked, but he said nothing more.

Dr. Yuryevna leaned forward, her academic detachment intact. “If such an event occurred, controlling the information space would be critical, especially in the immediate moments and hours after it happens.”

All eyes turned to the Russian exile.

“Railroad disasters resonate deeply in Russian psychology. There is a history of this happening, and it is almost always a result of incompetence and corruption. Lives wasted over greed.” Yuryevna’s fingers traced patterns on the table. “We would not claim credit, da? Instead, we flood Telegram channels with speculation. Maintenance failures covered up. Embezzled safety funds. Officials more concerned with Beijing bribes than Russian lives. We sow doubt between allies where none previously existed.”

“I like it. Turn their people against their own government,” Mara observed.

“Is already happening. We simply amplify.” Yuryevna’s smile could have etched glass. “Perhaps leaked documents showing rail officials’ Swiss bank accounts, videos of Chinese advisors living in luxury while Russian workers die. The narrative writes itself.”

Before she even spoke, Batista saw the gleam in Yuryevna’s eyes as a plan took shape. “Jim… you could let me tinker with CHIMERA. I could generate some deepfakes we could test and make ready to use when the time’s right?”

The room stirred when she mentioned CHIMERA. Cognitive Hyper-Intelligent Media Engine for Realistic Alteration was TF Nightfury’s most potent digital tool. In the wrong hands, it could make anyone say or do anything on video, complete with perfect audio matching — a dangerous capability they wielded carefully, and under the strictest of rules.

Batista sat back as he absorbed the discussion happening within his team. Cyber weapons were clean in theory, code instead of bombs and bullets. But when the time came to launch this attack, it would leave a trail of death and destruction in its wake.

“Colonel, if it comes to it and we need to authorize this attack, what’s your confidence level on a clean execution without a digital trail leading right back to us?”

“If ordered — high. We’ve run simulated attacks over a thousand times without a single trail of evidence that could be traced back to us.” The cyber commander’s certainty was absolute. “Give the word, hoss, and pick the trains. Within a few hours, physics takes over.”

“You’re absolutely certain about the attribution?”

“Yes. We’re ghosts inside their systems,” Colonel Rooke confirmed as he pulled up a forensic analysis. “The attack uses their own switching logic against them. There’s no malware signatures to look for. No external connections to back-trace. To the investigators, it’ll look like the catastrophic failure it was.”

“And if we nudge them a bit with CHIMERA, they’ll believe whatever narrative we feed them,” Yuryevna added.

Batista smiled slowly. Another tool of war. Another crossed line in defense of his country.

“All right, Colonel, Yuryevna. Keep the capability warm but weapons tight. This is a wartime-only option unless directed otherwise.” Batista checked his watch. Nearly noon. “And on that cheerful note, let’s break for lunch. Reconvene at 1400.”

Chairs scraped back. Conversations sprouted in small groups. Special Agent Cross caught up to Colonel Rooke near the door. “Hey, Colonel, out of curiosity, does it bother you that some of these actions you talk about will invariably lead to the death of civilians who are certain to be caught in the crossfire??” The FBI agent’s voice carried an edge. “It seems cold how we choose who lives or dies when these people are just doing their job.”

Colonel Rooke paused, studying the younger man. “I do. I think about it every day.” His drawl returned, softer. “The same way I think about our port workers if the PLA succeeds in their attempts to harm our people. It’s war, and war has casualties.”

Rooke’s hand found Cross’s shoulder. “We’re supposed to be better?”

He leaned in. “You think we’re the good guys. They think they’re the good guys. Know the difference?” His eyes hardened. “I want my kids to have a future. Not theirs. If they win, my family loses.”

Cross stared, uncertainty shifting to understanding. The weight of their decisions was suddenly real.